


It's What You Don't Know

by Blackbird Song (Blackbird_Song)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Missing Scene, Other, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-30
Updated: 2015-05-30
Packaged: 2018-04-01 22:50:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4037560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blackbird_Song/pseuds/Blackbird%20Song
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it takes multiple voices to make us aware of our blindfolds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's What You Don't Know

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SwissMiss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwissMiss/gifts).



> Dear SwissMiss,
> 
> Thank you for your copious leeway and guidance. I wish I could have written you a good casefic, but I'm even slower at those than I am at writing in general, which is saying a lot! Your writing is brilliant and you deserve the very best. I hope that this small piece will work for you.

"He's pining for you, you know."

John blinks up from his blog, realising how long he's been fussing at it when Mary's face is an ultra-white blob. "What?"

It's not so much her face that comes into focus as her scoff. "That man you're blogging about. The one you've been blogging about since six o'clock."

John rubs his eyes, which makes Mary's appear as two blue punctuations in the blob. "I'm blogging about the case. It's hard to get it all to make sense. And no, he's not pining for me! Sherlock doesn't pine for anyone."

"Did you see his face last night?" 

"You mean when he was arranging the toes in the chocolate box or when he was acidifying ear cartilage?"

Mary thumps his shoulder just hard enough to let him know that he's being a tosser. 

"I saw him look perturbed, annoyed, pissed off, bored and self-absorbed – all of which are normal for him, by the way."

"Okay." Mary rubs the shoulder she'd thumped. "You coming to bed soon? Early morning tomorrow." Her hand creeps up to the base of his neck and for just a moment before he turns, the face in the photo he's just selected for the blog stares back at him with a gaze that would rivet the hardest soul.

"John?"

He wonders why he's not looking at Mary, as he'd planned.

"Bed?"

"Oh. Oh, yes, in a minute. I just need to finish up for the night."

"Right. I'll come looking for you in twenty, shall I?"

John shakes himself off and deletes the line of full stops he's just discovered typing. "I'll be up in five. Just have to post this entry...."

"Mm." Mary kisses his cheek and leaves.

John gazes at the piercing eyes in the photo. "Pining for me ... rubbish!" He uploads the image, checks the formatting and posts the entry.

*****

"Sherlock!"

He awakens to find Mrs Hudson's frazzled countenance blinking down at him, hair tangled and eyes bleary. "What?"

"You were screaming. Again."

"Nonsense! I haven't screamed since I was five and—"

"And saw your mother naked, yes I know." Mrs Hudson pulls out her iPhone and points it at him.

Sherlock cultivates his most impassive gaze as the full-throated screams assault his pride. "Anyone can fake a scream."

"Sherlock! Are you implying that I—"

"No, no, of course not! Just that someone could easily manipulate you into believing that I was screaming. You love me too much to do anything like that."

"I wouldn't be too sure of that," Mrs Hudson mutters before sitting pointedly on Sherlock's bed. "This is the fifth night this week that you've woken me with your screaming. The neighbours have started complaining."

Sherlock snorts. "Neighbours. Always a bad idea." 

"It's causing a rift between me and Mrs Turner."

"Oh."

"And John says I need my sleep."

"Ah." Against his will, Sherlock feels himself starting to soften inside. "I do apologize, Mrs Hudson."

"Perhaps you could have dinner with John and Mary, dear."

"I did that last night."

"No, dear, they came here, remember? You were soaking ears in something."

"Hydrogen iodide. Well, hydroiodic acid, in its aqueous state. I was hydrolysing them."

She gives him a look. 

"We had stale biscuits."

"That's hardly dinner, is it?"

"It was for the bacteria."

"Well, it's no wonder John moved on! Feeding him and his future wife what you'd feed a bacterium ... honestly, Sherlock!" She pulls out the iPhone again.

"Mrs Hudson, I—"

 _"JOHN!"_ The voice – his voice – is filled with the anguish he's heard only when someone watches the person they love most in the world being killed in front of them.

Mrs Hudson shuts off the phone, gets off the bed and gives his arm a quick, friendly squeeze. "Go have dinner with him tonight, dear. See if you can stay the night. Maybe two nights. Maybe even a week. Yes, I think a week should do perfectly. Tell Mary she can use your place as a bolthole if she needs to, just as long as she doesn't scream."

"This is my flat, Mrs Hudson! I have experiments that—"

"You can work on those during the day. The neighbours and I need our sleep for a week."

Sherlock opens his mouth—

"I don't want to call Inspector Lestrade...."

"I can't stay with John!"

"Then stay with your brother! Or Miss Hooper and her fiancé, or some of your homeless lot, but for heaven's sake, let me get some sleep!" Mrs Hudson leaves, shutting the door ridiculously quietly behind her.

"It's my flat," Sherlock bellows.

Mrs Hudson's voice seeps through the closed door, winding itself into Sherlock's ear and through his head: "Neighbours...."

*****

"It's a bit soppy, even for you." Mycroft thinks better of tossing the piece at Sherlock when he notices the hand-ruled staff lines. And then he notes the expression on his brother's face. "But then, John and Mary are romantics, aren't they?"

"John is."

Mycroft tries not to show too much interest. "And Mary isn't?"

"Not to the same extent."

"Why are you involving yourself with them? They'll only leave a mess."

"Because John's my friend. And Mary is clever enough to recognise a skip code at sight."

"Ah." Mycroft smiles slightly. It always stretches his face in a way he despises. "Well, if you want her, you'll probably have to make it a triad."

Sherlock stiffens and his face turns sour. "I don't 'want' Mary."

"Do you want me to investigate her for you? See if she has any ... experience with skip codes?" Mycroft is so bored that he almost wishes that he could go back to Serbia and play with torturers. Fortunately, that fades quickly. Torturers are dull in every way. But he does make a mental appointment for tomorrow with Magnussen. 

"No."

Mycroft looks back at the waltz. "Romantic, wistful, handwritten ... anyone would think you loved him."

"He's my friend."

An ineffable sadness tickles at Mycroft. "Yes.... Well, this is ... danceable." He hands the waltz back to Sherlock. "I hope John knows how to waltz."

The expression on Sherlock's face is enough to quell a few seconds of Mycroft's boredom. "I'll have to teach him." He sounds like he's being slaughtered.

"Is he that bad?"

Sherlock frowns. "I don't know."

Mycroft bestows an indulgent look on him. "You love both dancing and John. Teaching him to waltz should be fun, if you protect your feet and knees."

"I won't need to protect anything."

Mycroft raises an eyebrow.

Sherlock rolls his eyes. "John moves well when he's not faking a limp."

"Dancing makes oafs out of the most graceful of men."

"Only when they're trying to impress the one they love."

Mycroft turns his second most dangerous smile on Sherlock. "Yes."

*****

Molly is pretty sure the engagement ended when she stabbed Tom's hand at the wedding. But as Sherlock would tell her, it was more likely due to the fact that she had chosen Tom for all the wrong reasons and Tom's not quite that stupid. Of course, Sherlock can't tell her that if he's not there and she hasn't seen him for about a month.

She puts her head down against the gust of rain-soaked wind, attempting to shield her coffee as she increases her speed towards work, and runs headlong into a shoulder. "Oh, God, I'm so—John!"

"Hello, Molly." John rubs his shoulder. "Long time, no see."

"I'm so sorry! Are you all right? Oh, and look, I spilt my coffee all down your front!"

"And yours, by the look of it," John points out.

"Oh...fuck!"

There's a smile breaking across John's face. "Don't think I've heard you swear before."

"Sorry. I don't do it often."

"That's all right. I do it all the time. Are you okay?"

"Yes. Yes, of course. Just ... not looking where I'm going." Molly blinks up at him. "Do you want to come inside?" She gestures to her destination, about fifty metres away. "I have things in the lab that'll take the stain right out."

"Sure," John says, after an awkward moment. "Might as well do."

Molly has no idea why John just accepted her invitation. "Oh. Oh, brilliant! Okay, let's—" she realises that she's babbling and just starts moving before things get worse. She wonders why she'd feel safer with Sherlock.

Inside the lab, she doffs her sodden coat and nods at John when he looks pointedly at the hook next door. "I'll just fetch you a lab coat, shall I? You can put whatever needs cleaning on my bench."

"Oh, right. Thanks!" John smiles at her.

Molly nods at him, wishing a little that she didn't feel like there were stickies all over her face. It doesn't take her long to find John an appropriate coat, so she takes two seconds in the Ladies' to retie her hair and smooth out some wrinkles – most of them in her psyche. 

She hands John the coat. "Would you like some coffee? You know, to drink instead of to wear?"

The tension is instantly broken with John's brilliant smile. "No, thanks. The wife's telling me to cut back."

"How's married life? I haven't seen you since the wedding."

"Can't complain. Mary's pregnant, you know..."

"Oh, really? No, I didn't know. Congratulations!"

"Thanks." John's face goes soft for a moment before a shadow flits across it.

"Is something wrong?"

"Not really. How are things with you and, er, Tom?"

"We broke it off." It's less painful than telling him that Tom left her a note. It also has a ring of truth about it because really, she did expect him to be something he wasn't.

"Ah. I'm sorry."

She gives him the universal breakup smile. "It's for the best, really." It isn't. "At least, Sherlock would say so."

"Ah." This time, it's followed by a wistful look that flits across John's face faster than lightning.

"Have you seen him lately?"

They both laugh at their near-perfect unison. 

"Neither has Greg," says Molly.

"He's probably off on a case." But the temporalis and masseter muscles on both sides of John's face are twitching.

"I'm a bit worried about him," Molly ventures, as she starts to apply the solution to his coffee stain.

"Don't be silly; he's fine."

"He left your wedding early."

"What?"

Molly doesn't need to look to know that at least one zygomaticus muscle has joined the others in twitching. "He left it early," she reiterates, keeping her eyes on her work as though she were doing something terribly important for Scotland Yard. "Close friends of the bride or groom only do that when they're sick or terribly sad and can't be around anyone." She addresses a particularly tricky bit of the stain.

"He's never been fond of weddings. He just left as soon as he could."

"You didn't see his face when he was playing that waltz." Molly keeps working at the stain, though most of it's already gone. She'll have to dry it off, soon. "It was like he was ... pining. He'll never look that way at me." As soon as it leaves her face, she's mortified. "Oh, god, I really am pathetic. I'll just pop this in the dryer for a few minutes." She escapes as quickly as possible.

*****

Of all the people John doesn't want to encounter during his daily 'sulk walk', as Mrs Holmes apparently calls it, Billy Wiggins is third on the list. He starts to walk past the man with all the purpose of an army doctor who can and will sprain anyone who gets in his way (again), but Wiggins blocks him (again) saying, "I need to talk to you."

"No, you don't. And," John adds, before Wiggins can speak again, "you really don't want to."

"No, I really don't," Wiggins agrees.

"Good. Well, now that's settled—"

"But I need to." Wiggins just looms there, looking like a giant bulrush.

"Did Mycroft threaten you again?"

"Always. But that's not why I have to talk to you."

"Billy, I'm really not in the mood—"

"Mr Holmes sent me to inquire about your intentions."

John blinks. "What intentions? And Sherlock can bloody well ask me himself, can't he?"

"He's not Mr Holmes, is he? He's Sherlock."

"Well, you can tell Mycroft to—on second thoughts, I'll tell him what he can do." John starts to move past Wiggins, though he'd almost prefer to move through him.

"Not Mike. Mr Holmes."

John sighs. "All right. What intentions?"

"Well, he said he wants to know if you're coming home for supper."

"Supper? He wants to know if I'm coming for—YES, I'm coming home for supper! I'm practically under house arrest, anyway, so what choice do I have?"

"Well, you could probably kill a rabbit or a woodpigeon and cook it over a fire you built, as long as no-one caught you at it."

"Billy, this has been the worst Christmas I've ever had, yeah? So if you don't get out of my way and let me finish my walk, I'll do a lot worse than sprain you."

"The worst Christmas you ever had was when Harry went and killed that kid when she was driving home trolleyed on Christmas Eve."

John feels his fist clench.

"But I digress. I deduced that there was another meaning to Mr Holmes's question." Billy cocks his eyebrows as he only does when he's trying to be significant.

"What other meaning?" John's teeth are clenching hard enough to hurt.

"He wants to know what you intend towards your wife and his son."

John is too flabbergasted to kill Billy. "What?"

"Well, they're both pining for you – anyone can see that – but more to the point, you're pining for at least one of them. Anyone can see that, too."

"H-how—" John swallows, forcing himself to imagine spending the rest of his life in prison instead of the absolute pleasure he would take in throttling Billy Wiggins to death immediately. "Where, in this whole world, would you get the idea that I was pining for Sherlock?"

"Aha! You see? His was the first name out of your mouth. I knew it!"

"Pining for a wife makes sense. Pining for a best friend doesn't, especially when you've been spending nearly twenty-four hours a day trying to make sure they don't die of a fucking bullet wound they sustained whilst trying to protect you!"

"That was given to them by your wife," Billy supplies.

"Yes, Mary shot Sherlock and nearly killed him!" John can't quite fathom why his voice is quite so out of control. It never got this way in Afghanistan.

"Your wife nearly killed the man you love. Not too hard to figure out why you hate her, is it?"

John grabs the wrist he sprained all those months ago. "I do not hate my wife. And right now, if you don't let me continue my walk, I will deprive you of the use of this arm for life. Are we clear?"

"I notice you didn't deny that Sherlock's the man you love."

John twists the wrist just right. "Are we clear?"

"Crystal." Billy winces.

"Good," John seethes. "Now go back to Mr Holmes, and tell him I'll be home for supper. My intentions towards my wife and my best friend are my business. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

John releases Billy's wrist as though it were compost gone mouldy. "Then get out of my face."

"Okay, okay!"

*****

"He's pining for you, you know."

Sherlock blinks at her. "Has he told you this or have you and Mrs Hudson been gossiping?"

"Of course we've been gossiping! The most useful information in the world comes from housekeepers, butlers and live-in landladies. You know that."

"It helps if they haven't got a fifty-year weed habit."

Mary snorts. "How many nicotine patches are you wearing today?"

"None. They've been taken away until I'm ... despatched."

"Oh. Sorry. I can get you some, if you'd like."

"I won't need them where I'm going." 

Mary's glad the morning sickness went away a while back. "I'm not going to let them kill you."

"I doubt you'll have much choice."

"You saved John. You saved me. You saved our marriage. I won't let them kill you."

"I'm a murderer."

"And now we have something else in common. All the more reason to protect you."

"You're an assassin. I'm just a murderer."

"Which means that I'm very good at what I do."

"You'll have a child and a husband in tow – a husband you believe to be 'pining' over me. Such things tend to compromise one's competence in certain fields."

Mary shrugs. "I like you."

"Oh. Well, that might give me a little extra time. I'll be sure to stay alive for at least the six months Mycroft gave me and that you'll need to get your reflexes back after the birth of your ... boy or girl?"

"John gets the news first."

"Ah."

"And Sherlock ... he more than loves you, you know."

"So ... not much more than six months, then...."

"John sprains people for being stupid; I kill them. This is the reason we both love him, you and I. That, and he channels our brains so well." Mary smiles as Sherlock nods at her point.

"Mycroft said that if I wanted you, I'd have to make it a triad."

Mary snorts out a messy laugh before she can control herself. "Mycroft said that?"

"Yup."

"Stupid tosser!"

"My thoughts, exactly, but—" Sherlock points up at the surveillance camera.

"Have a closer look."

Sherlock squints at it. "Oh. Very clever. He'll have it back on in, oh, about thirty seconds."

"I know. So: I'm not interested in a triad and neither are you. We both love John and he loves both of us, though I don't think he's quite got it that he's interested in you sexually."

It's fun to watch Sherlock change colours.

"And though you may be a little further along than he is, you're not there yet. So," Mary pauses to swallow the rock in her throat. "So when something happens to me, either in childbirth or in Uzbekistan or on the M4, you'll look after him, right? And our child. Because he won't be okay when that happens." She wants to turn away because being genuinely vulnerable is unbearable, but she forces herself to let Sherlock see her fear and sadness. "And I really do want to spend the rest of my life with him."

There is a long, unbearable silence.

"I can promise you that, Mary." Sherlock's voice is rich and comforting in a way that makes her want to curl up in a fœtal position inside it. "But I doubt he'll want me the way you think he will."

"Give it time," Mary says, daubing at her eyes.

"And I don't know that I'll want him in that way."

Mary smiles at him. "Liar."

Sherlock smiles at her. It's genuine, and it touches her that he regards her so highly. It's almost too bad that she's not interested in threesomes. Almost.

*****

He doesn't usually look around the pub when he stops in for a quick pint after work, but something tells him to look over his right shoulder. Sure enough, there's a familiar figure sat at the most remote table, staring fixedly at something in a lager glass that should probably be put out of its misery. He shakes his head and walks over there. "Hello, John."

"Oh, hi, Greg."

"Mind if I join you?"

John waves him to a chair. "Help yourself."

"Oh, that's gone flat, mate. Can I get you a new one?"

John looks at his drink and then up at Greg. "Yeah, all right. Thanks."

"What are you having?"

"Not this, apparently." John puts a smile on his face that falls off two seconds later.

"Amstel do?"

"Yeah, sure, why not?"

Greg can't remember ever seeing John so down. Not even when Sherlock had 'died'. He waves over a server. "Two Amstels and take this away, yeah?"

The server nods and removes the stale drink.

"I, er, heard that Sherlock's being sent somewhere."

"Somewhere." John nods. "He won't tell me where."

Greg wishes he had a lager in front of him. "I'm sorry, John."

"Yeah, well ... what can you do?"

The server arrives an eternal thirty seconds later. He's efficient and not chatty, much to Greg's relief and most likely John's. 

Greg raises his glass to John and says the only thing he can possibly say, under the circumstances: "Bottoms up!"

John raises his own glass and clinks Greg's. "Bottoms up."

They drink, though not enthusiastically. The air is thick with John's grief. "Why did he do it, John?"

John shakes his head. "I don't know. I don't bloody know, Greg. It doesn't make any sense." He has another pull on his lager. "I just know that after tomorrow, I'm never going to see him again." And another. "Fucking bastard!"

Greg drinks his beer carefully, eyeing John.

"Sorry," John says, nursing his glass. "It's just ... I...." He pushes the glass away from him. "Maybe I should switch to water."

"How much have you had tonight?"

"Just what you've seen me drink. It's just ... I don't want to be Harry."

"You won't, mate. She's an alcoholic. You're not."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because I am, that's all. Sure, I mean. Though come to think of it, Sherlock is enough to drive anyone to drink."

"My point, exactly." But there's a smirk building on John's face.

"So my only question to you is, do you want to say goodbye to Sherlock sober or hung-over?"

The smirk fades. "Sober."

"So let's finish this drink over by the dartboard. You can think of his face on it."

The sound John lets out is half laugh, half bark. Greg ignores the twist of tears in it as he gives John's shoulder a friendly squeeze and steers him towards the darts.

*****

Sherlock fixes his eyes on John until the clouds devour him. Even then, he looks through them, trying to see if he can catch a last glimpse of the person he loves most in this world. No sense pretending he doesn't. He's said it in front of a room full of eager listeners more than once. And there's no sense pretending that he's not trying to soak his memory in every essence of John he can absorb before all possibility of his best friend – of any best friend – is lost forever.

And then Mycroft calls. 

The aeroplane turns around. 

It's on the ground. 

John and Mary are still there. 

And Sherlock's feet are barely on the tarmac when John's arms are thrown around him and pulling him into an embrace he never realised he needed this much. 

It's terrifying. 

It's even more terrifying than it was at the wedding because this time, he's not sure he can refrain from returning it. And with every passing second, it becomes exponentially more important that he pull John so close that both their ribcages would crack – which would be awful because injured ribs hurt worse than anything except a bullet near the sternum. 

He's also not sure what Mary would think if he hugged the stuffing out of John, but he's trembling so much with the need of it that he looks over to her, not even trying to hide his state.

She stares at him as though he were insane, and slowly mouths, "Well, go on, then!"

He never thought his arms could wrap that tightly around anyone. " _John._ " The puff of his own breath coming back to him from the skin of John's face, redolent of John's scent, is almost too much for him.

"Sherlock."

The feeling of John's face pushed right against his neck is so necessary that Sherlock wouldn't care if it temporarily blocked his carotid artery. He doesn't want to faint, but he doesn't want it to stop. 

And then he catches sight of Mycroft's face, just in time to see the smile schooled off it, and of Mary mouthing, "Maybe stop, now" as he feels John's brief kiss against his skin. He nods at Mary, which enables him to brush his lips against John's ear and whisper, "Game on."

John laughs and pounds him on the back before breaking away, though they're still grasping each other's shoulders. 

Sherlock realises that he is grinning like an idiot and doesn't care. And though his shouted, "The game is on!" is for everyone, his eyes are fixed on John.


End file.
